The Body in the Building

by Jane Stockwell

  James steepled his fingers, then said thoughtfully, “Yes, yes, it makes sense that would be the conclusion to draw.” He looked back at the screen, then at me again. “You do know I’ve been friends with Samuel for years, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “I find it hard to believe that he could do such a thing, to murder someone and tarnish the reputation of me and this company.”

  “I know, James, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Do you have any direct evidence of his involvement?”

  “Not yet, but I am going to continue to dig until I find it.” I sighed. “The police were trying to pin all of this on me, that I had made the mistake and tried to cover it all up and that Dave killed Elliot Walthers, the reporter whose body I found,” I said. “I tried to tell them that Olsen was responsible for it and that he was the one who tried to kill me yesterday.”

  Involuntarily, I shuddered at the memory of the day before’s events. “Unfortunately, he had set himself up a rock-solid alibi, so he must have hired someone to do it. But if it weren’t for the attempted shooting yesterday, they may well have arrested me already.”

  “Samuel is a smart man, I’m sure he would have thought through how to distance himself from any apparent involvement.”

  “Especially given his obvious intention to go into politics soon.”

  “Yes, yes,” James said thoughtfully. “How did he manage to change the geo reports here, though?”

  “I spoke to Dave about that,” I replied. “He agreed with me that someone smart could hack our swipe system without too much trouble. The alternative is that he got someone internally in Andersons and Andersons to do it.”

  “One of our people?” James said, surprised.

  “Yes. That was why I wanted to speak with you in private.”

  “Sensible,” he replied. “Do you have anyone in mind?”

  “Well,” I answered slowly. “The only person who comes to mind is Simon Fielding. He has been acting strangely the past couple of days, but I don’t think it’s him. Without his help, there was no way I would have obtained the backups of the geo reports.”

  “He may still be involved, Nat,” James said. “Just in case, let’s keep any of the evidence you have away from the corporate servers as to not tip him off.”

  “I thought of that,” I replied. “Everything is on the USB stick I gave you. Of course, Dave knows everything I do, but he’s an ex-cop and knows not to show your hand too early.”

  “You’re a smart lady, Nat. I’m very glad you came to me with this.” James considered for a moment. “What we need is that hard evidence of the seepage through the west wall, then we’ll try to uncover Samuel’s involvement. Let’s go there right now and get it.”

  “That sounds fantastic, James,” I said, relief flooding through me.

  He took the USB stick out of his computer and put it in his pocket. “I just need to grab some things, I’ll meet you at the lift in a second.” James waved his hand, “Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.” He took his suit jacket from the back of his chair and put it on.

  A moment later, we both stepped into the lift and James swiped his access card on the security sensor and pressed the button for the lower car park. As the doors closed, I said, “Oh, I need to get the moisture detector, it’s in my office.” I pressed the button for my floor, but nothing happened.

  “My card has express override on the lift,” James smiled with a menace I had never seen before. “And we won’t need the moisture detector.”

  James reached behind his back under his jacket, then drew it out again. In his hand was a gun.

  Chapte r 16

  I stared at James in shock. “What the hell is going on?” I demanded. My brain couldn’t register what I was seeing, that the gun pointed at me was real. I had known, worked for James for years. I trusted and respected him. He had been on my interview panel when I was hired. James Anderson was a good man.

  At least, that is what I had always thought.

  “I’m sorry, Nat, I really am. But you just wouldn’t let this go.”

  “Let what go?” The shock was beginning to pass, although I was still terrified with the gun pointing at my chest, my mind was racing. Everything I had found, everything that I had thought Samuel Olsen responsible for, James was in on it.

  “You were supposed to be who everyone would blame for falsifying the records with the Olsen building, the one who had covered up your mistake,” he said. Anderson shook his head. “That bloody reporter was right in the thick of it all, he just kept digging. I had to keep him quiet.”

  “It was you!” I cried. “You killed Elliot Walthers!”

  “I didn’t want to, but he left me no choice.” He looked into my eyes. “And neither did you. When you started sniffing around those geo reports, I realized that Walthers had managed to get his information out somehow. I knew then I had to silence you as well.”

  “That was you waiting for us at the site,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” he replied simply.

  The lift door opened at the upper car park level. James gestured with the gun. “Out. Drop your phone on the floor just outside the elevator door, then go to my car. I may have missed before, but I won’t at this range.”

  I reached into my bag and placed my phone on the ground as he had instructed, then walked towards his car. It was a new black Mercedes Benz with tinted windows. James followed a couple of steps behind me. The indicators on the car flashed as he unlocked it with his remote.

  “Get in the passenger’s side. Don’t try anything stupid.”

  I did as he asked. I opened the door and climbed in. James sat in the driver’s seat, the gun still trained on me.

  He pressed the starter and drove toward the car park exit, the car doors locking automatically. As we crested the exit ramp, I remembered the police officer who was assigned to watch over me. I could see the squad car parked across the street from the building.

  When he saw the black Mercedes, the bored police officer looked up from the newspaper he was reading. For a brief moment, I thought that he would see me and stop it from driving off with me in it, but I realized the window tinting was too dark for him to see inside the car. The gun was trained at my stomach and I didn’t doubt that James would shoot if I attempted to escape. The police officer’s curiosity faded and he looked back down at his newspaper.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. My voice sounded thin as fear constricted my throat.

  “Where you are going to take your own life in a fit of remorse for killing Walthers and for falsifying geological data.”

  So he planned to finish the job he’d started the day before. Somehow, I’d known that the moment he pulled the gun out. However, his matter-of-fact response reminded me of something he had mentioned earlier. “Before you tried to kill us at the building site. How did you know I had found the changed geo report?”

  “Oh, that,” James smiled coldly. “When you asked Simon about the backups, he contacted me to ask me what to do. I needed his help to replace the files on the servers. It’s amazing what you can get people to do with a little leverage.”

  That explained why he didn’t give me a response straight away, he was asking James what to do. “Then why give it to me at all?”

  “I told him to. When the police investigate your apparent suicide, they’ll see both the original and modified versions on your computer. Just more evidence that you were the one behind it all. Besides,” he smiled that cold smile again, “I wanted to see what else you might find that might lead back to me. You have proven to be a very resourceful young woman. You were most helpful in uncovering anything I had left behind.”

  Bastard! He used me to cover his tracks, I thought bitterly. To James, I said, “What about Samuel Olsen? Was he involved?”

  “Samuel? No, he has no idea.”

  We’d reached the suburbs of the city by now, and the houses were becoming more spread out. I didn
’t have much time left.

  “You don’t have to kill me. The police will find out what you did anyway. Simon…”

  “Simon won’t say anything. He won’t get the chance.”

  My blood ran cold. Shocked, I asked, “Is he…”

  “Not yet,” James cut me off. “But he’s out of the way somewhere safe until I get back and can finish dealing with him.”

  “Can you live with three deaths on your conscience, James?”

  “Fortunately, I don’t have to live with it for very long. Now be quiet.”

  I remained silent as the muzzle of the gun was still aimed at me, but I pondered on what he’d just said. What did that mean?

  The black Mercedes passed the city limits, and the suburbs gave way to farmland. We drove on in silence for nearly an hour as all signs of human occupation dwindled. The sun was overhead as midday approached. At last, Anderson slowed the car and turned into a narrow dirt road, really nothing more than a pair of muddy wheel tracks, barely visible from the interstate highway on which we had been traveling.

  It was obvious the road hadn’t been used for a long time. Grass grew high between the wheel tracks and you could hear it rubbing against the underside of the car. Anderson drove slowly; he was clearly concerned about damaging the paintwork on his expensive new car. And probably not wanting to leave any visible evidence on it either, I mused to myself. I was beginning to despair that my chances of escape were disappearing fast as we traveled on and on.

  Finally, Anderson stopped the car. We had pulled up beside a creek, the water flowing fast from the recent rain.

  “Get out,” he said shortly. He waved the gun for emphasis, so I opened the car door. The air was thick with the sounds of the rapid water and buzzing insects.

  My muscles tensed, but James noticed and shook his head. “Don’t try anything stupid. I will shoot you if you try to run.”

  I stepped out of the car slowly. James had opened his door and stepped out as well. He pointed the gun toward the creek. “Over there.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” I asked fearfully.

  “You are going to be so overcome by feelings of guilt that you are going to throw yourself into that creek there.”

  “I will not.”

  “I didn’t say you would be alive when it happened. We are so remote here, that by the time anyone finds your body, assuming they find it at all, any evidence of a bullet wound will have long since been eradicated.”

  “I thought you said that it was going to look like a suicide. If they can’t find my body and I didn’t leave a note, the police won’t believe that.”

  “Ah, but you did leave a note,” James smiled coldly. “One of the last actions Simon did for me before I had to restrain him was to log into the network under your login and write your suicide note.” He sighed theatrically. “It was very moving.”

  I couldn’t believe that this was the same man who I had considered a mentor and friend for years. Yet here he was, doing things I would never have thought him capable of.

  Under the sound of the water and insects, I thought I could hear something, very faintly. Could it be an approaching car? I glanced at Anderson’s face. His expression gave no hint that he had heard anything. If I could keep him talking, keep him distracted… if I was right, then there was a chance I might just survive this.

  If I was wrong, then at least I would live for a few minutes longer.

  “What about Simon? We can’t both be apparent suicides, that would look far too suspicious,” I said.

  “Simon is easy,” Anderson said. “He was your accomplice, you blackmailed him into helping you because you found out about his criminal record. Just some minor hacking attempts when he was a teenager. Nothing too despicable, but still enough to warrant termination if his employer found out about it, especially in his position of managing the security and privacy of our employees.”

  “Anyway, once you were overcome by your suicidal tendencies, you shot him. Of course, nobody will discover the body for a while, he lives alone, has no friends, no family who cares about him.

  “After he hasn’t shown up for work for a day or two, I’ll ask Angie to ring him to check on him. Eventually, someone will go and check on him. They will find him, along with the gun that killed him. It will have your fingerprints all over it.”

  I heard the noise of a car on the wind again, so I spoke quickly to mask it. “How do you account for the shooting attempt?”

  “You arranged for Simon to be in the basement when you and Dave turned up, to try to throw the police off the scent. It was a miracle that he didn’t accidentally shoot either of you.” Anderson shook his head in mock sadness. “I do feel sorry for Dave, he trusted you, and it seems that he didn’t know you at all.”

  “Dave would never believe I would do any of that.”

  “He’s an ex-cop, he’ll believe the evidence.”

  “But..”

  Anderson’s eyes hardened. “That’s enough stalling, Nat. I don’t relish having to do this, but it must be done.” He raised the gun.

  I could no longer hear the sound of the car, I must have imagined it. “I deserve to know why before I die, James,” I cried. “You owe me that much.”

  The gun dipped slightly. “Because I want to leave a strong legacy to Geoff when I’m gone,” Anderson said simply. “I’m dying, I have terminal cancer. I only have weeks to live.”

  We all knew that James Anderson had been ill, but not that ill. It was why he looked so gaunt and pale when I saw him that morning.

  “The Olsen mall needs to be successful,” he continued. “With Samuel moving toward a likely successful political career, this will almost certainly be his final project. He has been our biggest client for years, and we need to attract others to cover the deficit. This one needed to be spectacular.

  “The story you told the police about the footings will now sound like the ravings of a guilty conscience unraveling towards suicide. The only evidence of the clay deposit is on the USB drive you gave me. Simon has already removed every other instance of it from the servers.” James smiled. “I must thank you for finding my mistake for me, though Nat. You were always very thorough.”

  He raised the gun again. “Goodbye, Nat.”

  I closed my eyes as a shot rang out. To my immense surprise and relief, there was no sharp pain as a bullet ripped into me. I was still alive! When I opened my eyes again, James Anderson was lying on the ground, a bloody hole in his shoulder. The white shirt he wore under his suit jacket began to stain red from the wound. He was groaning in pain, his gun lying several feet away; when the bullet hit him, the impact had spun him around and the gun had flown from his hand.

  Behind him, Detective Mark Symonds stood with his gun still pointed at Anderson, a finger of smoke floating from the barrel. He had fired a moment before James had managed to pull the trigger.

  Symonds looked at me, his face typically unemotional, and said, “Well, that was lucky.”

  Chapter 17

  I sat perched on the seat of Detective Symonds’ nondescript car, my feet swung around so I was facing out of the open door. The paramedics had wrapped a thick blanket around me, despite the hot day, as shock had started to set in. In my hands was a mug of hot chocolate. I was grateful for it; had I been not holding it, my hands would have been shaking badly.

  A patrol car was parked in the clearing next to an ambulance. James Anderson lay on a stretcher, two uniformed police officers standing guard. His wound heavily bandaged under the white blanket and restraints. He was still conscious, refusing to look in my direction as the stretcher was loaded into the back of the ambulance. Symonds walked beside him with his notebook and pencil in his hands.

  A second patrol car arrived in the clearing. Before it had come to a complete stop, the passenger door was thrown open and Dave Forrester jumped out. He ran toward me, completely ignoring the policewoman taking my statement. I put down the cup and stood as he gripped me in a fierce bearhug.
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br />   “Nat! My God, are you all right?” he asked breathlessly. Dave was always the man you wanted in a crisis, cool and calm, no matter what. In contrast, he was now anxious and concerned. I had never seen him so worked up before.

  I hugged him back tightly. “I’m fine, babe,” I replied. “Well, I will be.”

  “The police wouldn’t tell me much, but I heard it was James Anderson behind everything.” Dave glanced at the ambulance as the paramedics closed the door, his face darkening.

  “It was,” I said simply.

  “So Olsen wasn’t involved?”

  “Not according to James, no. In fact, it seems like he is the victim of James’s attempted fraud.”

  “So James was the one who took a shot at us yesterday?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Luckily for both of us, he’s not a very good shot.”

  The thought of cowering in Dave’s car as the glass shattered around us brought a shiver to my spine, so I quickly changed the subject. “How the hell did you find me? The police have been cordoning off the area and taking my statement, but nobody has told me how I’m not dead!”

  “I can answer that one for you,” came a voice from a few meters away. I looked up to see Symonds walking towards us. “You can thank your receptionist, a Ms…” he looked down at his notebook, flipping back a couple of pages, “a Ms. Angela Mahoney.”

  “Angie?” I said, surprised.

  “Yes, Angie,” Symonds confirmed. “She had gone to see Simon Fielding about a broken printer if I recall correctly. When she arrived saw he wasn’t at his desk, she tried to see if he was in the server room. The door was locked, but she could hear sounds like someone trying to call for help. She enlisted the help of your boss, one Mr. Peter Larson, who opened the door and found Fielding bound and gagged.

  “Once they freed him, he told them that you were in danger and that he had been forced to write a suicide note under your system account. Peter rang your phone, but there was no answer. We found it in the car park by the lift, I am assuming you left it there?”